Arch Linux

agomezh

Member

Registered: 2009-12-17

Posts: 19

[Solved] -Change the background image of gdm login screen.

When I first installed Arch I found that the default background image of gdm login screen ( or lock screen ) didn't look good with the desktop image that I had, so when I installed I looked for a way to change this. Sadly I could not find any direct and easy way, I looked in forums, I looked in gconf-editor and I could not find any relevant information about it. So I decided to look for the file and change it.
This was not the best option, clearly since now that I installed Gnome 2.30 it replaced the image with the old one and I had to change the file again. Since maybe some other people are having similar problems I thought I could just post the place where gdm is looking for the file, and if somebody has any suggestions about how to change it with a better way, I would welcome it .

After the longest intro to a directory, here it is: /usr/share/pixmaps/backgrounds/gnome/background-default.jpg

Thank you .

Last edited by agomezh (2010-04-11 18:53:09)

eldragon

Member

From: Buenos Aires

Registered: 2008-11-18

Posts: 1,029

Re: [Solved] -Change the background image of gdm login screen.

so, using the wiki wasnt an idea?;)  http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gno … ound_Image

you should not touch that file, since it will be overwritten in the next gdm update as you have already experienced.

Last edited by eldragon (2010-04-04 15:31:04)

agomezh

Member

Registered: 2009-12-17

Posts: 19

Re: [Solved] -Change the background image of gdm login screen.

Thank you for the quick reply.
Actually the value of /desktop/gnome/background/picture_file goes to the background of the desktop, not the login screen or the lock screen. Nonetheless I realized that by running:
sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gnome-appearance-properties
you can actually change the value.

aWafer

Member

Registered: 2009-10-24

Posts: 2

Re: [Solved] -Change the background image of gdm login screen.

Not to belabour the point, but after much hair pulling, I stumbled upon the following method, and it works perfectly. It sets the default background (for GDM login, Lock, desktop...etc.) for Gnome to whatever you want--even new users get the new default background on their desktop, although they can obviously change it, this is only the default. The page also shows a method of doing the same as gnome-appearance-properties method with just gconftool-2. I hope this doesn't just cause confusion.

[Note: It still has to be run as root of course. I used sudo.]

http://library.gnome.org/admin/system-a … n#gconf-20

gconftool-2 --direct \
  --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
  --type string \
  --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename some_picture_filename.png